CPU jumpered correctly? (5 volts etc)

Are you sure you're using FPM RAM? my Asus 486SP3G is mega picky when it comes to RAM....It only takes some of the FPM RAM I have 😜

edit: looks like it has one of those odd ram arrangements judging my stason.org...you must follow the RAM type/size info there very carefully

I'm afraid I've got a "mental block" about ancient RAM. I'm just hopeless with it. I expect it's a RAM config that I haven't got right. Unfortunately, I'm clueless as to what shape and type sticks to put in it.

So, I need Fast Page RAM. It's a pity that almost none of the old 486 mobo RAM is labelled. Why did they do this? I did try 1, and then 2 sticks of FP RAM, but they were single sided sticks. Perhaps I need double sided sticks? I have some somewhere, but I'm not sure where exactly..

Also, if you look at the bottom of that stason webpage, what does "KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION" mean? At the moment, it's set to internal. Eh? Is it something to do with that (missing) keyboard chip, whose socket can be seen to the left of the ISA slots?

Thanks a lot.

Does it have damage from leaked acid?

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Does it have damage from leaked acid?

There is definitely no signs of leaked acid damage. The existing battery was a curiously small button/coin battery. It had 2 metal legs soldered on to it. Those legs went in to the mobo. It was easy to rip this whole battery thing off the mobo. Definitely no physical damage to the board, either broken items, or leaked acid. But the board looks really ancient though. Very dusty.

Looks like the bios has been messed up. The only way to check if the motherboard is alright or not is to hot flash the bios.

You can easily (carefully though) remove the bios chip and hot flash it on another running motherboard. Uniflash (Universal Flasher) flash utility works well for this purpose.

And where is the keyboard controller chip? (The socket is empty.)

Edit : And also make sure the cache memory jumper positions are correctly reflecting the cache chips on the board.

retro games 100 wrote:

I'm afraid I've got a "mental block" about ancient RAM. I'm just hopeless with it. I expect it's a RAM config that I haven't got right. Unfortunately, I'm clueless as to what shape and type sticks to put in

Some small info..

30-pin SIMMs are 8bit wide (excluding parity).

The 80286 (and 386SX) has a 16bit data bus. You need at least 2 SIMMs of the same size. First fill bank0, then optionally bank1.
It's address bus is 24bit wide, so it can access up to 16MB.

The 80386,80486 have a 32bit data bus. You need at least 4 SIMMs of the same size.
Their address bus is 32bit wide, so they can access up to 4GB.

Some SIMMs also have parity lines. You may need to enable parity it in the BIOS.

It doesn't really matter if they are double sided, as long as they have the same specs.

On late 486 (586) mainboards things are a bit easier..
They use other old RAM types, such as 72-pin PS/2-SIMMs, which are 32bit wide (excluding parity).

I hope that helps a bit.. 😊

Thanks a lot for the info.

I was thinking of sorting through my box of 72-pin RAM sticks, in order to identify them. I was thinking of putting each stick (or pair of sticks) in to a socket 7 board. This type of board would almost certainly accept any type of 72-pin stick; eg EDO, FPM, and "basic 70ns". Is there a utility (perhaps an old DOS program, or may be some kind of "floppy boot up" utlity) that can identify all different types of 72-pin RAM? For instance, you install some RAM in the mobo, run the utility, and it then says "EDO RAM identified", or "FPM identified", or ""basic 70ns identified". I can then label all the RAM sticks, so that I know what type of RAM I have in my box of RAM. Thanks a lot for any comments.

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot for the info.

I was thinking of sorting through my box of 72-pin RAM sticks, in order to identify them. I was thinking of putting each stick (or pair of sticks) in to a socket 7 board. This type of board would almost certainly accept any type of 72-pin stick; eg EDO, FPM, and "basic 70ns". Is there a utility (perhaps an old DOS program, or may be some kind of "floppy boot up" utlity) that can identify all different types of 72-pin RAM? For instance, you install some RAM in the mobo, run the utility, and it then says "EDO RAM identified", or "FPM identified", or ""basic 70ns identified". I can then label all the RAM sticks, so that I know what type of RAM I have in my box of RAM. Thanks a lot for any comments.

Hmm.. I can't think of something special yet..
Classic RAM modules simply contain standard chips, so they don't have any ID.
I guess this was later introduced with the DDR-RAMs.

You can
.. have a look at the RAM chips. They have numbers on it, which give hints of speed and size.
Example: 'HY531000AJ-70' (From a chip on a 1MB SIMM module with 70ns)
.. try to measure RAM speed with help of a tool called 'System Speed Test' (SpeedSys).
You may want to disable caches to get usable results, as you want to measure speed of the RAM chips,
not the whole memory bandwith. This method is inaccurate and for comparison at best.

Oh, by the way, are you aware of 'Navrátil Software System Information' (NSSI) ?
That's a general purpose diagnostic and benchmark thingie.
It's quite detailed. Requires +386 and pure DOS.
Additionally, it has nifty features such as detection of soundcard DSPs, hidden video modes, CPU bugs.
Maybe it is useful for you (to test your mainboards)..
Don't worry, if it doesn't run on all of your PCs. It can be very picky.

Good luck! 😉

Thanks a lot for the NSSI tip! 😀 I downloaded it from this webpage -

http://www.navsoft.cz/products.htm

retro games 100 wrote:

I've had this board for a while now. I've never seen it POST. I've tried about 10-12 different sticks of RAM in either Bank 0, […]
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I've had this board for a while now. I've never seen it POST. I've tried about 10-12 different sticks of RAM in either Bank 0, or Banks 0 and 1. I think the jumpers are set OK. I used this webpage for the settings -

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/F/FI … 86-VIP-IO2.html

The schematic above seems fairly accurate. However, one strange thing is that the VLB slots are "soldered out"/missing on my mobo.
When I switch on power, the 3 keyboard lights flash, and then that's it - no sign of life.

A couple of things to note: please look at the left edge of the middle 2 SIMM sockets. Can you see that weird looking wire running from one edge of the chip, down to the middle bottom edge of the chip? Also, there was a small button battery soldered on to the board. I was able to rip it off, including the metal "lugs"/legs attaching it to the mobo. (You can't just remove the battery unfortunately.) OK, so now I have no battery (but I am very confident it was dead anyway), but would this stop the mobo from POSTing? There is an external battery header pins on the mobo, and I might have an external battery gadget somewhere...is it worth finding it, to try and get the board to POST?

Thanks a lot for any comments.

just wanted to comment on this old topic because a guy gave me the same motherboard for free today because he said "it didnt work"
my version has the vlb slots, also near the isa slots on the left corner you are missing a chip, your socket is empty, also on top right corner on J2, you need to put 2 jumpers on 1 and 2 and 15 and 16 because your cpu is 5v, that information is on a website that has PDF of the actual fic manual

J2 is:

1 2 (jumpered)
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
13 14
15 16 (jumpered)

OK so mine did not post either. took out the voltage regulator addon board that goes connected on j2, tried a DX2 66mhz cpu, THEN INSERTED FPM RAM (i did not thest with EDO yet)..

did not post with a trident ISA card.
then brought a viper v330 pci card....did not post
then brought a geforce4 pci card....did not post
tried some spitfire pci card and did not post
then tried with a trident pci card, for god sake what doesnt work with a trident pci card....and DID NOT POST!

i was about to give up.....

then i noticed that it was not posting but the keyboard on boot was giving the 3 lights blick on power on..

then trying i got a trident VLB and it posted!
tried a cirrus logic VLB and it posted too!

then tried a Creative Ct6510 on the 3rd PCI slot ant it posted with that card.
then tried a SIS PCI card and it posted again.

seems the board is very picky on what vga card you have installed. and extremely picky if the PCI card goes down a little bit or up too much (how centered is to the pci socket) , it wont post either.

really nice mothrboard